Coast Guard to premieres its Top 10 Videos to recruits

Dec 17th, 2013 · Comments Off on Coast Guard to premieres its Top 10 Videos to recruits

CAPE MAY, N.J. — Coast Guard Training Center Cape May will be featured for the first time as one of the Coast Guard’s Top 10 Videos of the 2013 and will compete in the service’s 2013 Video of the Year Contest.

The Coast Guard will premiere its Top 10 videos of 2013 highlighting some of the service’s most compelling cases and training from 2013 to its newest recruits at Training Center Cape May Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

More than 160 recruits and staff are expected to get a sneak peek of the Coast Guard’s Top 10 Videos of 2013 and will cast the first votes for the 2013 Video of the Year. For the first time, Training Center Cape May will be featured in the Top 10 Videos in “It’s not JUST 8 weeks,” which chronicles the arduous Coast Guard basic training program.

“Most Coast Guard operations and missions aren’t caught on camera,” said Capt. Todd Prestidge, commanding officer of Training Center Cape May. “Much of our work occurs in the black of night during the most brutal weather conditions or thousands of miles away from U.S. shores in some of the most dangerous places on earth. This gives the people we serve an opportunity to see what Coast Guardsmen do every day.”

The videos will be released nationwide beginning Sunday. Fans of the Coast Guard can vote for their favorite Coast Guard video by liking it on the service’s Facebook at Facebook.com/uscoastguard or YouTube page at www.youtube.com/user/USCGImagery through Jan. 13.

“We also appreciate having an opportunity to show our service’s newest members some of the missions they’ll be doing just a few days after graduation,” said Prestidge. “We will be asking them to do dangerous work, and they will be given great responsibility when they leave here. This helps them realize how important their training is to their success and safety as a Coast Guardsmen.”

The Top 10 video compilation includes:

A look into the Coast Guard’s rigorous basic training program at Training Center Cape May where more than 80 percent of the Coast Guard’s enlisted force starts their careers. Recruits wait an average of more than six months to attempt the program where more than 30 percent are either reverted, rephrased or washed out of training.

Coast Guard Cutters Tackle and Shackle break ice along the Penobscot River in Bangor, Maine, Feb. 21, 2013. These crews regularly break ice along Maine’s rivers to keep the waterway open for commercial traffic and to prevent flooding.

An aircrew aboard an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., medevac a 47-year-old man from a 780-foot cargo ship being tossed in heavy seas approximately 200 miles east of the Chesapeake Bay March 6, 2013.

Surfmen from Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment battle the waves of the Columbia River during surf drills. Surfmen are considered to be some of the best boat coxswains in the world and are famous for piloting vessels through breaking waves.

An MH-60 Jayhawk Helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., rescues a sailor 70 miles east of Kitty Hawk, N.C. The sailor asked for help after he hit his head and was injured.

Coast Guard personnel participate in underwater egress training in an indoor pool at the Coast Guard Aviation Technical Training Center located in Elizabeth City, N.C. The Coast Guard implemented underwater egress training July 2013 at the ATTC aimed at increasing a member’s survivability in the event of a small boat capsizing.

Coast Guardsmen use warning shots and disabling fire stop a drug smuggling vessel off the coast of southern California Oct. 5, 2013. Coast Guardsmen found 31 bales of marijuana and apprehended two suspected smugglers when they boarded the vessel.

An Air Station Kodiak HC-130 Hercules airplane crew conducts an Arctic Domain Awareness flight with scientists from NOAA and the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, July 16, 2013. Many people do not know of the extensive research that is being conducted in the Arctic.

Coast Guard divers demonstrate new equipment that will improve safety for the divers and allow them to remain underwater longer and work in harsher conditions March 26, 2013.

Coast Guard Cutter Hollyhock travels from the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore to its homeport of Port Huron, Mich. in this time lapse video spanning Oct. 11 to 26. Hollyhock spent more than three months in dry dock undergoing necessary maintenance to prepare it for a busy winter season on the Great Lakes.